Marine Corps Dog Adoptions

Are hundreds of decommissioned bomb-sniffing Marine Corps dogs in need of adoption by the public?

Claim: Hundreds of decommissioned bomb-sniffing Marine Corps dogs are in need of adoption by the public.

MIXTURE

Example:[Collected via Facebook, 2012]

Marine Corps Decommissioned IED Detector Dogs

The Marine Corps has around 400 IED (Improvised Explosive Device) sniffing dogs that are being decommissioned & need forever homes/families. Most of the dogs are breeds such as: Labradors, Belgian Malinois, Border Collies, German Shepherds & Rottweiler. The dogs are all incredibly well-trained. Many have served in war zones and are responsible for saving countless American, NATO and foreign lives. The dogs are in the District of Columbia (D.C.). Adoptive families must be able to travel to DC to pick up the dogs or arrange transport at their own expense. Please help these war heroes get the lives they deserve.

Origins: An October 2012 message circulated on the Internet sought adoptive homes for some 400 bomb-sniffing U.S. Marine Corps dogs of various breeds that had "served in war zones" but were now "being decommissioned" and were in "need of forever homes/families." However, as USA Today reported, that message was a hoax:

There are currently no bomb detection dogs available for adoption, the Marine Corps Systems Command said in a statement.

An e-mail whose origin is not clear and that appeared to circulate widely said the Corps was looking for good homes for "incredibly well-trained" Labradors, Belgian Malinois, border collies, German shepherds and Rottweilers that served in war zones.

The contact information provided in the e-mail was that of an actual Marine office and staffer, but when contacted the office said the e-mail was a hoax and no such offer was available.

The Marine Corps Systems Command said it was not known who received the e-mail or who sent it out.

The Marines said such offers are sometimes made for "decommissioned" dogs but that they are offered to other federal agencies first since many are still fit for service even when they can no longer deploy to war zones.

In June 2014, however, the Marine Corps Times reported that the Marine Corps' requirement for keeping IED (improvised explosive device) detection dogs, or IDDs, was winding down, and that that branch of the service would be looking to find homes for those animals down the line, through adoption by other federal agencies, law enforcement, troops, or possibly private individuals:

Officials with the Marine Corps military working dog (MWD) program are looking to find homes for all the service's improvised explosive device-sniffing dogs as the Corps' requirement for these highly trained animals draws to a close.

By the first quarter of 2015, all of the remaining IDDs will be gone, said Bill Childress, head of the Marines' MWD program.

As combat operations draw to a close in Afghanistan, Childress said, the requirement for the IDDs has evaporated.

Childress said he is advertising with law enforcement agencies to try to find new work for the remaining IDDs. So far, he said, 200 of the dogs have found new work at the joint Defense Department military working dog training facility at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, while another 150 or 200 have been adopted by regional police departments and law enforcement agencies.

Private individuals can also apply to adopt a dog, though officials with the MWD program often make judgment calls on whether a household is right for, say, a Belgian malinois trained in aggression tactics. Childress said the troops who work with the dogs get the first opportunity to take them home for good.

David Mikkelson founded snopes.com in 1994, and under his guidance the company has pioneered a number of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone, the light bulb, beer pong, and a vaccine for a disease that has not yet been discovered. He is currently seeking political asylum in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

Copy the article link

Send us your feedback

Thank you for writing to us! Although we receive hundreds of e-mails every day, we really and truly read them all, and your comments, suggestions, and questions are most welcome. Unfortunately, we can manage to answer only a small fraction of our incoming mail.

Our site covers many of the items currently being plopped into inboxes everywhere, so if you were writing to ask us about something you just received, our search engine can probably help you find the very article you want.

Choose a few key words from the item you're looking for and click here to go to the search engine.
(Searching on whole phrases will often fail to produce matches because the text of many items is quite variable, so picking out one or two key words is the best strategy.)

We do reserve the right to use non-confidential material sent to us via this form on our site, but only after it has been stripped of any information that might identify the sender or any other individuals not party to this communication.